NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact: Steve Halvonik 717-787-1381

Auditor General Jack Wagner Testifies Before Committee and Offers Suggestions to Improve Safe School Legislation

HARRISBURG, Feb. 11, 2009 – Auditor General Jack Wagner today appeared before the Senate Education Committee to discuss his department’s initiatives to improve school safety and to offer recommendations to improve proposed safe schools legislation.

Wagner said Senate Bill 56 is a positive first step towards strengthening school violence reporting, memoranda of understanding, coordination of efforts by school administrators and law enforcement, and on the overall safety of public school entities across the state.

“The bill contains several of the recommendations from our audit of the Department of Education’s safe school activities, but we believe that a few amendments would enhance it,” Wagner said.

The legislation clarifies the responsibilities of local officials involved in crafting, signing and submitting a memorandum of understanding for each school to the Office for Safe Schools. However, Wagner recommended adding a requirement that a local police chief must sign the memorandum of understanding and require that the memorandum be not only “submitted” to the Office for Safe Schools, but updated annually.

Among the suggestions Wagner made to strengthen the bill include:

• Requiring the Department of Education to establish an office to be named “the Office for Safe Schools” at the deputy level.
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to “have the duty to implement” the mandates in the bill to make certain that the office is cognizant of its obligations under the law.
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to convene a state-level advisory committee that would be responsible for developing a model memorandum of understanding to be utilized by all school entities as a prototype.
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to review each school entity’s memorandum of understanding with local law enforcement to ensure that it is in compliance with state law.
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to verify the existence of all schools emergency plans and to ensure they are updated annually.
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to verify the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of the data and information in its School Safety Annual Report and monitor them on an ongoing basis;
• Requiring the Office for Safe Schools to ensure that its School Safety Annual Report is released in a timely manner.

“With these suggested changes we can create an effective Office of Safe Schools that will make our schools safer,” Wagner said. “This is essential because parents should never have to worry about whether their children’s learning environment is safe and free from violence.”

In 2007, the Department of the Auditor General sent a survey to all 722 public school entities in the commonwealth and a total of 491 school districts, intermediate units, vocational-technical schools, charter schools, and cyber charter schools responded to the survey, which represents an overall response rate of 68 percent. The final survey results showed that most schools that responded had a comprehensive safe-schools plan. However, Wagner said, their content varied greatly and many did not address key safety elements.

As a result of the survey findings, the Department of the Auditor General developed a school safety and security checklist that his auditors have incorporated into regularly scheduled school audits, completing 130 school districts to date.

Wagner also said his department recently completed a special performance audit of the Department of Education’s administration of Safe School activities. The audit determined that the department has consistently taken a hands-off and reactive approach to the task of addressing violence in Pennsylvania schools. The special performance audit included 25 recommendations for the Department of Education to strengthen its policies, controls, and oversight of safe-school initiatives.

Auditor General Jack Wagner is responsible for ensuring that all state money is spent legally and properly. He is the commonwealth’s elected independent fiscal watchdog, conducting financial audits, performance audits, and special investigations. The Department of the Auditor General conducts approximately 5,000 audits per year. To learn more about the Department of the Auditor General, taxpayers are encouraged to visit the department’s website at www.auditorgen.state.pa.us.

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